Leaving
by xMissCatastrophe
Summary: A short oneshot about how Jace felt when he left Clary asleep in City of Glass. Wrote it just because it's a long wait to CoHF.


**I do not own The Mortal Instruments nor am I Cassandra Clare.**

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The wind blew fiercely, whipping Jace's pale golden hair around his face. A few strands poked into his eye, but he didn't care. He was focusing on the girl ahead of him.

Clary.

She was standing outside the door of the Penhallows' place. Where he was staying with Alec, Isabelle, Sebastian, and Aline. _What is she doing? _he wondered. Her red hair flowed around her in the wind, her unruly curls flying in every other direction. She knocked on the Penhallows' door. Jace crouched down behind a bush. _What is going on? Is she looking for me? _Jace wondered why she would be looking for him at this time of night, probably midnight. She didn't look frantic...

Someone answered the door. Jace strained his eyes to see who. Clary had a huge grin on her face, the one that she normally only used when around him. Something weird was going on...

Then Jace saw the person's face.

Sebastian.

He was leaning against the doorframe, smirking the way Jace himself normally would. Jace watched as he leaned toward Clary, pulling her closer by the waist. Clary was gazing up at him with the icy green eyes Jace had come to love. He narrowed his eyes as Sebastian put both hands on her waist. They were pressed together now. His thoughts were scrambled, but mostly shouting mineminemineminemine. He barely even dared to blink.

And then Sebastian and Clary were kissing.

Clary had leaned up to Sebastian and Sebastian had filled the gap between them. It wasn't a good night kiss or anything of the sort. It was _a let's go to my bedroom and do bad things to each other kiss_, a type Jace had encountered more than once. He shuddered, feeling something swell up inside him. His heart. He felt small and breakable, even vulnerable. Something burned behind his eyes. It was a burn he hadn't felt since...

_The boy never cried again._

He stood up promptly and ran down the street, completely unnoticed by Clary and Sebastian. He ran until he found a mass of trees and hid behind them, breathing heavy and uneven. He pressed a hand to his chest. It came away red. What? he thought. As Jace looked down, he saw that there was a hole in his chest where his heart should be. A single tear slipped down his cheek.

_The boy never cried again._

Jace woke up sweating with something warm in his hand. _Where am I?_ He turned his head slowly, blond hair falling into his eyes. Clary. It was Clary. His Clary. And she was asleep next to him, curled up into a ball, holding his hand. He let out a sigh. Thank Raziel it was only a dream. He watched her sleep for a while. It may have been only minutes, but it felt like hours.

Jace knew that he had to leave tonight, had to leave before she woke up. He didn't want to get up, though, afraid he might wake her or disturb her peaceful rest. He hated himself for even the thought of leaving her here alone, waking up without him. He had to let her know somehow that leaving wasn't something he wanted to do, but something he had to do. Slowly, he untangled his fingers from hers and got out of bed, watching her all the time. As soon as he was out of the bed, Clary screwed up her face and whimpered, her hand reaching out to his side of the bed. Jace winced.

"I hate myself for doing this to you, Clary. Maybe one day I'll stop hurting you," he whispered, the burning sensation from the dream behind his eyes. _You can't cry, Jace. Don't you dare cry_. "I love you," he murmured, the sound hardly audible to even his own ears. He blinked multiple times to shoo the burning away, but it only intensified.

He watched her sleep a few minutes more, then bent over and kissed her gently on the cheek, closing his eyes. A single tear fell down his cheek and landed on her freckled one. Then he kissed her temple and stroked her fiery red hair. By the Angel, he'd never seen anything so beautiful. With a sigh, he stood back up again.

It took a minute, being in the dark and all, but he eventually found a piece of paper and a pen in the bedside table. He wrote out a short note, which read:

_Clary,_

_ Despite everything, I can't bear the thought of this ring being lost forever, any more than I can bear the thought of leaving you forever. And though I have no choice about the one, at least I can choose the other. I'm leaving you our family ring because you have as much right to it as I do._

The sun was beginning to rise, and Jace wrote through the tears he felt coming on.

_ I'm writing this watching the sun come up. You're asleep, dreams moving behind your restless eyelids. I wish I knew what you were thinking. I wish I could slip into your head and see the world the way you do. I wish I could see myself the way you do. But maybe I don't want to see that. Maybe it would make me feel even more than I already do that I'm perpetuating some kind of great lie on you, and I couldn't stand that._

_ I belong to you. You could do anything you wanted with me and I would let you. You could ask anything of me and I'd break myself trying to make you happy. My heart tells me this is the best and greatest feeling I have ever had. But my mind knows the difference between wanting what you can't have and wanting what you shouldn't want. And I shouldn't want you._

He took a small break, closing his eyes and letting a few tears fall, concentrating on breathing evenly.

_ All night I've watched you sleeping, watched the moonlight come and go, casting its shadows across your face in black and white. I've never seen anything more beautiful. I think of the life we could have had if things were different, a life where this night is not a singular event, separate from everything else that's real, but every night. But things aren't different, and I can't look at you without feeling like I've tricked you into loving me._

_ The truth no one is willing to say out loud is that no one has a shot against Valentine but me. I can get close to him like no one else can. I can pretend I want to join him and he'll believe me, up until that last moment where I end it all, one way or another. I have something of Sebastian's; I can track him to where my father's hiding, and that's what I'm going to do. So I lied to you last night. I said I just wanted one night with you. But I want every night with you. And thats why I have to slip out of your window now, like a coward. Because if I had to tell you this to your face, I couldn't make myself go._

_ I don't blame you if you hate me, I wish you would. As long as I can still dream, I will dream of you._

_ Jace_

He let out a few shuddering breaths. His hands shook as he unclasped the Morgenstern ring from around his neck and placed it inside his folded note. "I wish you would hate me," he repeated, leaving the note on the bedside table and strapping on his weapons belt and putting his boots on and throwing on his white jacket. Quietly as he could, he walked over to her window and slipped out, guilt flooding him as he did so.

Once his feet were on the ground, he had only one thought.

_ Hunting time._


End file.
